First of all, a housekeeping note. I’ve decided to proceed on two tracks with this blog series: I’ll do some contemporaneous “Pandemic Lockdown” posts about a current or recent day (like this one, re: two days ago), and other posts that are more retrospective, looking back on an earlier day or days (like the preceding post about March 13-15). If all goes well, eventually the twain shall meet, and I’ll have a post for each day (or block of days), albeit published in a jumbled and out-of-order fashion.
The reason I’ve decided to do it this way is simply that, otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll never finish. With each passing day, the novelty of prior days’ sets of photos, videos & memories gradually wears off, and so my motivation to publish them declines (#ADHDproblems). Eventually, if I’m not careful, this fun blog project will start feeling more & more like homework. So, instead of forcing myself to fully “catch up” before I can post anything new, I’ll post things in the order that the spirit strikes me — and then later on, eventually, I can figure out a way to get everything in a more sensible order. Maybe. 🙂
Anyway… on with Day 25!
Monday, April 6
Before starting work on Monday — kicking off Week 4 in my basement office — I took the dog for a morning walk. It was really nice out. The flowers are in bloom!
I saw some chalk art:
And some other signs of the times:
Note my lovely pink mask in the reflection. I feel pretty, oh so pretty… 🙂
Oh, that reminds me: Pikachu is en route!
Speaking of which, I got to play some Pokémon GO on my walk, which was nice. I haven’t had much of a chance to play recently. Among other things, I caught an Eevee and a Minccino, and I put a Gengar (caught in a weekend raid) and my shiny purple Lapras (nickname: Beyoncé) in gyms.
More here. BTW, I love the new “TODAY” screen, with its quick look at ‘mons currently in gyms!
Anyway… when I got back to the house, I started my work day. Nothing too exciting to say about that, nor any fun photos, although I dare say it was one of my more productive work days in quite a while.
Oh, but also, I watched some of Melissa Etheridge’s live session Monday afternoon, in keeping with my New Week’s Resolution:
So, that was fun!
Also on Monday afternoon, Becky — who was home Monday after working 12-hour swing shifts (3p-3a) both Saturday & Sunday — brought her deliciously aromatic brownies down to my office, so I could smell them.
Mmmmmmbrownies. 🙂 See, working from home has some advantages!
Oh, and another advantage is late-afternoon back-yard breaks:
Before long, it was dinner time. And then dessert time. The brownies tasted as good as they smelled. 🙂
If you notice the colorful chart at bottom right of the dining room table photo, that was an exciting update on Colorado’s hospitalizations for COVID-19, which I charted just before dinner and brought to Becky & the girls as a bit of good news. As I explained on Twitter:
Speaking of good news, Monday was the day I discovered John Krasinski’s “Some Good News” video series on YouTube. Worth a watch, if you haven’t seen it yet:
Alas, there was some other news on Monday that wasn’t good. Namely, the deterioration of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s condition:
Also in the news Monday, Denver’s stay-at-home order was officially extended to April 30 (though that had been a fait accompli for some time), and Colorado’s statewide order was extended to April 26. I expect that both orders will be eventually be extended again, into May, though I wouldn’t be stunned if there is some slight loosening of certain provisions (or expansion of certain exceptions).
Speaking of which, after dinner on Monday, I had to run a couple of essential errands. This was my first time in two weeks going inside a store (or any other building besides my house) since exactly 14 days earlier, when I bought a chair at Office Depot on the eve of the citywide stay-at-home order. But our cats needed dry food, our foster kittens needed wet food, and I needed a laser printer for my home office. So…
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to use the curbside pickup at Petsmart, because my order was too recent & thus not ready yet. I had to go in.
But, they had good social distancing inside the store. I love the blue tape:
Anyway, mission accomplished…
…and on to nearby Office Depot, where I was able to do the curbside pickup thing:
I made a third stop to fill my tank with gas (with lots of hand sanitizing before & after). En route, I listened to NPR — and heard one hell of a sobering top-of-the-hour news update. I already embedded a two-minute video clip of it, up near the top of this post, but here it is again.
Never imagined I’d be hearing a news update like that in my lifetime. 😐
After getting gas, I headed home, where I was greeted by Scruffles:
Finally, before the girls’ bedtime, I assisted with some final tech prep for the first official day of online school:
Also, during the tech prep, our third-grader (above) discovered that she had received a classroom Buzz Lightyear Award for some of her work during the teacher-driving online school preliminaries in prior weeks. 🙂
All in all, one of the most eventful days of Pandemic Lockdown thus far.
I’ll leave you with some photos of adorable kittens:
